Tag Archives: Appraisers

Here’s a Realtor’s dream or nightmare. Maybe both. What if you had so many sales working that you couldn’t get them all closed because your county didn’t have enough real estate appraisers? True story out of Astoria, Oregon, which is ...

DEAR BENNY: My husband and I are in the process of purchasing a newly built home. We are scheduled to close within the next two weeks. All that was left was the appraisal for our lender. The first appraisal was ...

Veteran Charlotte-area home appraiser Everette “Sonny” Helms has a bone to pick with the Federal Housing Authority over its new – and he says confusing – standards for property valuation. “They’ve come up with some strange guidelines,” said Helms, owner ...

CHARLOTTE – The city is looking for a “stable of appraisers” at Charlotte Douglas International Airport mainly for future land purchases, according to CLT Spokeswoman Lee Davis. On Monday, the city issued a request for qualifications from firms interested in ...

The development, construction and real estate industry had its share of the action during the 2013 legislative session, which ended last week. Here’s a quick rundown of what happened with bills introduced during the long session.

When I started writing this real estate column in June 1971, the average mortgage rate was 7.53 percent, according to Freddie Mac. The median home price was $26,100. Today, the trend is definitely upward, with occasional short-term dips to remind us of the market's volatility.

Last fall, a company called ES Appraisal Services, based in Florida, went bankrupt. That the company went under isn’t unusual, as companies fold every day. But ES was the latest of three appraisal management companies that went out of business recently, all with the same troubling trend for real estate appraisers.

In 2009, about two years after the real estate market started its collapse, a new federal law took effect.
The federal Home Valuation Code of Conduct was created to reduce conflicts of interest in the process of appraising homes. Real estate agents and brokers were no longer allowed to order appraisals. Lenders were now in control of doing that, and demand for appraisal-management companies shot up.